Hello All,
It's been good running my stove the past week or so 24/7 now that it's cold enough. It's been producing the heat I love. Also, in a power outage during some bad storms last week my wife and I were happy knowing we had heat.
My stove is a VC Defiant catalytic purchased new in 2005. I've been watching the stove closely now to make sure it is running well. Part of this process involves me peeking in and seeing how the catalytic element is running during operation. It appears fine and glows from time to time during the low-slow burns as the fire lulls and more smoke is made. I still feel I have a few years of life left in this current element as I am very religious about following the operation procedures and not doing anything to contaminate it. Outside the only thing you see from our chimney are waves of heat and our chimney sweep always reports that our pipe barely needs cleaning.
Yet, reading threads here from posters like Elk had me wondering whether it would be worth it to replace the OEM catalytic with an aftermarket one that lights off at a lower temp? Would this provide more heat? Would I need to adjust the thermostatic control to set the temp differently? Are there other reasons why I might consider one of the newer elements and the associated expense? I was considering ordering one just to have a spare. However I'm wondering if it would be worth it to pull out the OEM version and put in the new cartridge and keep the used OEM as the spare? Or maybe I should just leave this thing alone?
Any thoughts?
BTW. The stove is burning 12 hours between reloads on low-heat with lots of coals left to start the next load. I'm very happy with the real-world burn times.
It's been good running my stove the past week or so 24/7 now that it's cold enough. It's been producing the heat I love. Also, in a power outage during some bad storms last week my wife and I were happy knowing we had heat.
My stove is a VC Defiant catalytic purchased new in 2005. I've been watching the stove closely now to make sure it is running well. Part of this process involves me peeking in and seeing how the catalytic element is running during operation. It appears fine and glows from time to time during the low-slow burns as the fire lulls and more smoke is made. I still feel I have a few years of life left in this current element as I am very religious about following the operation procedures and not doing anything to contaminate it. Outside the only thing you see from our chimney are waves of heat and our chimney sweep always reports that our pipe barely needs cleaning.
Yet, reading threads here from posters like Elk had me wondering whether it would be worth it to replace the OEM catalytic with an aftermarket one that lights off at a lower temp? Would this provide more heat? Would I need to adjust the thermostatic control to set the temp differently? Are there other reasons why I might consider one of the newer elements and the associated expense? I was considering ordering one just to have a spare. However I'm wondering if it would be worth it to pull out the OEM version and put in the new cartridge and keep the used OEM as the spare? Or maybe I should just leave this thing alone?
Any thoughts?
BTW. The stove is burning 12 hours between reloads on low-heat with lots of coals left to start the next load. I'm very happy with the real-world burn times.
